OpenAI’s revenue rose by about half to $10 billion in the third quarter, the first time the ChatGPT maker has crossed that line in a single quarter, according to figures it shared with investors on Tuesday.
The jump, from about $6.7 billion in the second quarter, was driven by its newest models and by fast-growing sales to businesses. OpenAI told investors that revenue from enterprise customers doubled in the quarter, and that growth in its application programming interface was led by its GPT-5.6 and Astra models and by image generation.
But the growth came at a steep price. OpenAI’s adjusted operating loss widened to $10.9 billion, up from $10.1 billion in the previous quarter. The loss still exceeded revenue by about $900 million, although the company’s adjusted operating margin improved from minus 150 per cent to minus 109 per cent, meaning losses grew more slowly than sales. A year earlier, in the third quarter of 2025, OpenAI reported $3.9 billion in revenue and a margin of minus 97 per cent.
The figures underline how expensive the race to build leading artificial intelligence systems has become. OpenAI is spending heavily on computing power and talent even as its sales accelerate, and investors are watching closely for signs that the business can eventually turn a profit.
The contrast with its closest rival is stark. Anthropic, the maker of Claude, disclosed $17 billion in third-quarter revenue with an operating loss of only $567 million, and it is now on the roadshow for a stock market listing that could value it at up to $1.4 trillion. The comparison is not exact, however: OpenAI’s adjusted loss excludes $2.6 billion of stock-based compensation in the quarter, while Anthropic’s figure includes it.
The disclosure comes as OpenAI seeks to complete a financing round valuing the privately held company at about $1.25 trillion. It has also scaled back the size of that round to $20 billion, according to the Financial Times, from an earlier target.
Note on sourcing: these figures come from documents OpenAI shared with investors and have not been published as audited public financial statements, because the company is privately held. OpenAI did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment, so the numbers cannot be independently verified against a public filing.
Sources: Wall Street Journal, “OpenAI Continues to Suffer Heavy Losses as Revenue Rises to $10 Billion” (https://www.wsj.com/business/earnings/openai-continues-to-suffer-heavy-losses-as-revenue-rises-to-10-billion-d2a96bbb); Reuters, “OpenAI posts steep losses even as quarterly revenue rises to $10 billion, WSJ reports” (https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/openai-posts-steep-losses-even-quarterly-revenue-rises-10-billion-wsj-reports-2026-11-10/).
